What to Do If Diskpart Failed to Extend the Volume?

Diskpart failed to extend the volume is common problem. Then what to do? Find a partition tool take the place of Diskpart is good. In this article, I recommend you try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server Edition and take examples to tell you why.

AOMEI Freeware

User Say

First I want to say how much I appreciate your partition manager. I have used many other software to try to move partitions around and they never quite work for me.

Mitchell

I have been trying to think of a way to thank you for this beautiful, simple and affordable product that saved my day. Again, your product is top notch.

Craig Rollins

Using Partition Assistant Server, I was able to repair the problem via Remote Desktop and a Cisco IPSec VPN. I will definitely use this product again it will always be highly recommended to my colleagues. Thanks you again.

When Diskpart failed to extend the volume?

When you extend volume by using Diskpart.exe, please don’t be surprised if you receive a warning message: "The volume you have selected may not be extended. Please select another volume and try again."

Diskpart command is a Windows built-in partition resize trick. You can use it to perform like converting basic disk to dynamic disk, converting MBR disk to GPT disk, creating/deleting a partition, extending partition, etc.

Although Microsoft improved the functions of disk manager in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windwos 8/8.1 and Windows Server 2008(R2), Windows Server 2012(R2) and you can shrink or expand a volume with disk management on these Windows operating system. The fact is many people still use Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 nowadays. And you cannot do those partition operations with Windwos built-in disk tool on XP and Server 2003. Good news is Microsoft also provides a command line-diskpart.exe.

Why Diskpart failed to extend the volume?

Diskpart differs from many command-line utilities because it does not operate in a single-line mode. Instead, after you start the utility, the commands are read from standard input/output (I/O). You can direct these commands to any disk, partition/volume.

Just now, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are still used by many users. Some small and medium-sized enterprises use Windows Server 2003 to do business. With the usage time increasing, disk volume get smaller and smaller and the running speed get slower and slower. To solve the problem, users have to extend the partition. They try to use Diskpart, but Diskpart failed to extend the volume with the error message: “DiskPart failed to extend the volume. Please make sure the volume is valid for extending.”

Why? There are several reasons: Diskpart command is not able to extend volume if it is FAT, boot/system partition, and no existing unallocated space. It only supports NTFS file system, extension only supports data volume, if it was the dynamic disk you want to extend, it should be only simple volume or spanned volume. And if you want, you can find more limitations of using Diskpart to optimize partition.

How to solve the question when Diskpart failed to extend the volume?

How to solve the problem to easily extend volume? If you don’t want to upgrade your operating system, that means insist on using Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, I suggest you don’t waste your time on Diskpart.exe. Instead, find a professional third-party disk partition tool is a good choice.

Because this article focus on Windows Server 2003, and system partition is the partition needs to be extended volume most often. So I take how to extend system partition on Windows Server 2003 as an example to explain how AOMEI Partition Assistant Server Edition works next.

First of all, download the Server Edition to install. Run the program, the main window shows disk partition information in detail.

Second, right click F: drive(because it is large enough), and select “Allocate Free Space” option. In the pop-up window, type a free space value, select partition C(system partition) from the drop down menu. Then click “OK” to return the main screen.

Third, the changes can be previewed in advance on the main interface. There are three pending operations: resize partition, move partition, move and resize partition. Operating these three operations respectively is also OK. But to save time, so choose “Allocate Free Space”. Now, click “Apply” button to apply these pending changes.

Another way to quickly extend the volume is choosing “Extend Partition Wizard” from the left wizard panel.

Once you click it, there will be a pop-up window as the following picture. The first method is to expand system partition, the second method is to expand any partition. More detail please visit here.

In summary, if Diskpart failed to extend the volume, you can turn to AOMEI Partition Assistant. It is a powerful and easy-to-use all-in-one partition software. AOMEI Partition Assistant Server Edition supports both Windows OS for home and Server. What’s more, the highlight is that there is no data loss when the process of resizing partition. It is a a highly-efficient partition magic to help you optimize computer performance very well.